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The Command Overview:

The Command (1954) was a Western - Film directed by David Butler and produced by David Weisbart.

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The Command Quotes:

Martha Cutting: You sympathize with them. Why?
Capt. Robert MacClaw: Perhaps because we destroyed the Indian's ability to make a distinction between the good and the bad. He has a child's logic: the white man hurt him, therefore all white men are bad.
Capt. Robert MacClaw: Sir, may I suggest that my troop act as rear guard?
Col. Janeway: Where did you learn cavalry tactics, Captain?
Capt. Robert MacClaw: Well, infantry isn't mobile...
Col. Janeway: Neither is dead cavalry. Ask Custer!
Sgt. Elliott: Never say an injun is dumb. He just waits for the chance to use his one good cavalry tactic: ring around and close in.
Capt. Robert MacClaw: I'm getting out of the Army in seven days.
Martha Cutting: As a civilian?
Capt. Robert MacClaw: As a doctor.
Martha Cutting: But you're one now.
Capt. Robert MacClaw: Am I? A veterinarian can yank an arrow out of a dead man or a live one and a blacksmith can cauterize a wound with a hot iron. But neither of 'em can pull a child through diptheria or pneumonia.
Sgt. Elliott: Well, injuns fight two ways, Captain. When they're running against a little outfit, they go ring around right away and close in quick for the kill. But if they're running against a big outfit, like we're tied up with now, they'll keep hacking and chopping away at your weak spots until they wear you down. Then make a ring around. And once they get you in a circle, you're finished.
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The Command Facts
Filmed in two separate versions - 3-D and CinemaScope - with different aspect ratios (1.37:1 for the 3-D, and 2.55:1 for the CinemaScope print). Only the wide screen version was ever released, though the 3-D elements still exist in Warner Bros. vault. Also the first wide screen Western of the 1950's. The flat (i.e. non 3-D) 1.37:1 version was also made available to theatres who were not yet equipped to project CinemaScope.
WILHELM SCREAM: As an Indian is shot off of his horse during the wagon convoy attack.
Began shooting late July 1953.
The wide-screen version of this film was photographed using Zeiss anamorphic lenses. The system was to be called WarnerScope, but it was essentially a straight copy of Fox's CinemaScope process. However, Warner Bros. realized that the Zeiss lenses were of inferior quality to the Bausch & Lomb lenses Fox used for CinemaScope. Ultimately it decided to drop the WarnerScope name, and instead licensed CinemaScope from Fox so it could use the superior Bausch & Lomb-designed lenses. These were first used by Warner for A Star Is Born.
There's a scene where Indians are attacking the wagons full of soldiers, and one Indian gets shot off his horse and then is run over by a wagon drawn by four horses. That wasn't a planned stunt - he was supposed to be "shot" and fall off the side of his horse, but the horse unexpectedly reared back and dumped him into the path of the wagon, which ran over him. He suffered numerous broken bones and ribs, but the scene was left in.
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